2017 Worst Passwords List for Business

The Passwords You Won’t Want Your Employees Using

Our 2017 worst passwords list for the year so far is in, and it’s time to start taking serious precautions with your employees to protect company data. In light of the recent worldwide ransomware attacks, it is now more important than ever to tighten your company’s security from every angle. Among many other things, passwords play an important role in the defense against hackers. Therefore, password management and standards should be a key element when it comes to your business’ security plan.

Although it’s difficult to manage users’ passwords, we’ve create a top 25 2017 worst passwords list to be shared throughout your business to help spread cybersecurity education awareness. Based on gathered data from organizations all around the world (SplashData/Lancaster University), zbrella is delivering the top 25 list of the 2017 worst passwords to date:

One thing that you may not know is that the passwords 123456 and password have held the top spot at the top of the worst passwords list for years. And now in 2017, it’s still being used.

Bad Password Practices

In order to ensure that your employees aren’t all using passwords that are in the 2017 worst passwords list, make sure that they are not employing these bad password habits:

• Don’t use the same password for multiple accounts
• Don’t write down passwords and leave them in an easy to find location
• Don’t first names, middle names, last names or nicknames
• Don’t use birthdays
• Don’t use common information that can be easily guessed
• Don’t use password or any other form of passw0rd as your password
• Don’t use all lowercase or all uppercase characters
• Don’t share your passwords with anyone
• Don’t store your passwords online

Good Password Practices    

To avoid your employees landing themselves on the 2017 worst passwords list with poor passwords, it’s important to share and educate your staff with good password practices. By implementing these steps below, it is a start to ensuring better cybersecurity:

• Use passwords with more than 8 characters
• Randomize the use of capital and lowercase characters
• Change passwords every 6 months
• Use symbols such as #,&,%,$ and so on if they are allowed
• Always add at least 1 number to your password
• Use two-step login or two-factor authentication
• Educate employees